


Alike Enough

by Dorksidefiker



Category: Marvel (Comics), Runaways (Comics), Wolverine (Comics)
Genre: Friendship, Gen, the life and times of c-list heroes in the marvel universe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-10
Updated: 2020-12-10
Packaged: 2021-03-09 19:55:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,552
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27991866
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dorksidefiker/pseuds/Dorksidefiker
Summary: It was only supposed to be a quick run to get some yarn.
Relationships: Molly Hayes & Gabby Kinney
Comments: 1
Kudos: 16





	Alike Enough

**Author's Note:**

  * For [TozierWrites](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TozierWrites/gifts).



> The first of two Molly and Gabby fics for my (very patient) friend, Hunter-Tozier.

It was only supposed to be a quick run to get some yarn.

Gabby had found a knitting pattern for a hat with cat ears that she absolutely had to learn -- never mind that she’d never so much as picked up a pair of knitting needles in her life -- and Daken had made the mistake of mentioning that he actually  _ knew  _ a thing or two about knitting.

In his defense, he was firmly in his seventh decade. He had a whole host of what Gabby liked to call Useless Random Skills (which Daken could easily argue were not at all useless), and knitting was far from the most unusual of the lot. After all, a healing factor didn’t make being cold any more pleasant. And regrowing frostbitten flesh was something he wasn’t particularly eager to do again.

But of course, Gabby being  _ Gabby _ , she’d seized on the idle comment and shanghaied him into taking her to a craft store that reeked of badly cured plaster and too sweet air fresheners. Daken was half convinced that if they dug too deeply into the yarn bins, they would find nothing but great mounds of mold.

At least he’d managed to steer Gabby away from the horrible plastic ‘vegan wool’.

Daken might have been many horrible things, but he had standards.

Of course, then someone went and punched a giant frog creature through a wall, utterly demolishing racks upon racks of ribbons that Gabby had become entranced by. Gabby yelped in shock and horror at the ruination of the ribbon, reaching out as if she might stop the wanton destruction of cheap strips of fabric.

The frog-creature, in true frog-creature fashion, oozed all over its undeservedly soft landing pad, and rose up on unsteady legs with a croak -- or possibly a belch. Either way, the stench of it was foul enough to have Gabby gagging, and even Daken’s eyes watered.

_ Rotting meat and sewage. Ugh. _

The frog-creature unleashed another croak-belch, only to find itself pelted with masonry from what had once been an artfully tacky wall of scrapbooking materials.

“Those! Were! Kittens!”

Daken might have almost mistaken the shriek as coming from Gabby, if she weren’t beside him. It was certainly the kind of thing that would get Gabby to start chucking masonry.

And then -- perhaps set off by the bricks striking its rubbery stomach, perhaps just as a taunt to the girl throwing them -- it vomited up a foul slurry of bile and meat and bone.

Not the wisest of moves, if on purpose. And it had done it right in front of Gabby. All over the ribbons.

The frog creature saw Gabby coming -- it would have been impossible to not, with those bulbous eyes and the way they were placed.

Seeing her coming and being fast enough to actually stop her were two very different things. Whoever or whatever the frog-creature might have been, it was clearly used to either being too physically repulsive to fight, or fighting only the untrained.

Or maybe the masonry chucking girl, who had not stopped, really was that much of a distraction.

In any case, Gabby had things well in hand. Daken didn’t see any need to step in, and sometimes a fight with a slimy, kitten eating frog monster was just what a girl needed. It gave Daken time to hunt through the yarn for something worthwhile.

By the time he’d found something that met his exacting standards, Gabby and the masonry chucker were by far more interesting in talking to each other than further pulping of the kitten eating frog-creature that was now sprawled out on the floor.

“Oh-em-gee, I love your hat!”

“Thank you! Your hoodie is soooo cute! I love the ears!”

Daken stuffed a few likely skeins into his bag.  _ Should have just ordered on-line _ . Now that the dust was settling, he could hear New York’s ‘finest’ closing in, just in time to be both useless and annoying. At least it wasn’t the Avengers, or Spider-Man. Or any of the hundreds of other heroes that felt the need to go poking in where they weren’t needed. “Time to go, Gabby. Say goodbye to your little friend.”

“ _ Molly _ ! We gotta go!”

From where Daken stood, he could see Molly, she of the masonry chucking and the be-eared hat, roll her eyes. “Hold on!” she yelled out the hole she’d made, leaning towards Gabby as they exchanged numbers. Or e-mails. Whatever it was people did these days.

The girl calling for Molly grew increasingly impatient, to Molly’s obvious annoyance. Gabby was just happy to make a new friend, and that friend was all she talked about all the way home, even while they evaded the police. All thoughts of learning to knit a hat had been driven from her mind in favor of talking about how strong Molly was, and how cool her hat was.

For the moment, anyway.

* * *

Molly had a dragon’s hoard worth of the world’s cutest hats. Gabby was quick to proclaim her envy of them, and her desire for a few of her own. Molly, for her part, was quick to express both her sympathy and dismay over Gabby’s general lack of… well. Stuff.

Really, it was a bit of a culture shock for both of them. Even on the run from her parents, Molly had always managed to find a way to  _ have  _ things, to  _ get  _ things, and even to hold on to them for a little while. Not as good at making and keeping hold of friends, but it was… well, it was normal. It was security. Everything would be alright, as long as she had a change of hats.

Gabby had never had things that were all her own. Not until she’d gotten free of the facility she’d been created in. Even now, she didn’t really have much that she could call all her own. She had a couple changes of clothes, an ever growing collection of leashes for Jonathan -- but those were really Jonathan’s, as far as she was concerned.

“Laura doesn’t really have a lot of stuff either.”

“That is so weird. I mean, what do you wear?”

“I have a hoodie…”

“You have, like, an apartment. In New York. With a  _ closet _ !”

“Jonathan lives in there.”

“... okay, but you need a hat.”

It meant dragging Daken in when they were on chat, since he was the one who actually knew how to knit. Molly was full of questions and suspiciously pointed comments. A few days of that, and Daken was ready to accept that the girl was sparker than she liked to let on; but she would have to be, wouldn’t she? To have lasted as long as she has. Most of what Molly said went right over Gabby’s head; Gabby was exactly as she presented herself. It was something Daken found that he valued in her -- something rare in their world, to be treasured, no matter how awkward it could be.

During a quiet moment when Gabby was out of the room, Molly admitted that it was something she liked about Gabby, too.

Despite their best efforts, neither Gabby nor Molly were particularly good at knitting, nor were they that interested in putting in the practice, once it came down to actually doing it. They showed each other their lumpy attempts at kitty hats and giggled, and the next time an army of mutated ants tore through Albany, Gabby gave Molly her hat attempt, and Molly gave her the dinosaur thing on her own head.

The internet was a blessing to them. Molly and her friends lived mostly on the West Coast, and for all the world hopping, Gabby rarely found herself in the same place as Molly. The only time they got to spent together seemed to be when the world was on fire, or raining salmon, or-

“My life wasn’t always this weird.”

Gabby dropped down on the ledge, letting her legs dangle over the side and handing Molly a soda. It was even still cold, despite the power having been out for hours. She said nothing yet; she’d known Molly long enough by now to know she was in a  _ mood _ .

Molly was watching the extra suns in the sky.

“It wasn’t?” she finally asked.

“Nope.” Molly opened the can without looking. “Like… the weird stuff happened, but… it didn’t happen to me. It all happened on TV. It was like a show.”

Gabby curled her legs beneath herself, opening her own can with a claw.

“Dunno why I’m here. Can’t even do anything. It’s all Nico right now.”

Which Gabby could not argue. She was only there herself because she’d tagged along with Laura, who had followed Warren, who- why was he there?

Because  _ Being There _ was what superheroes did.

“This has always been my life. I was created in a lab. Part of a set.”

Molly’s hand crept over, until she was holding Gabby’s. Impossible suns winked out across the sky on their watch.

“We helped,” Gabby pointed out. “We got people out. That’s got to count for something.”

Molly finally let her eyes drop from the slowly darkening sky to the empty, evacuated streets below. “We should get burgers. You haven’t been to In-n-Out Burger yet.”

“You know, I haven’t? Is it good?”

  
“It is the  _ best _ .”


End file.
